LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 61 



communion, I call to mind, with infinite delight, those beautiful 

 verses of Dryden : 



' A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged, 

 Fed on the lawns, and in the forests ranged. 

 Without unspotted, innocent within, 

 She feared no danger, for she knew no sin. 

 Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds 

 A.nd Scythian shafts, and many- winged wounds 

 Aimed at her heart ; was often forced to fly, 

 And doomed to death, though fated not to die.' 



" I have made no mention of my political feelings in these 

 Memoirs. My politics, indeed, claim little notice. Being disabled 

 by Sir Robert Peel's Bill from holding even a commission of the 

 peace, I am like a stricken deer, walking apart from the rest of the 

 herd. Still I cannot help casting a compassionate eye on poor 

 Britannia, as she lies on her bed of sickness. A debt of eight 

 hundred millions of pounds sterling (commenced by Dutch William 

 oi glorious memory) is evidently the real cause of her distressing 

 malady. It is a fever of the worst kind : it is a disorder of terrible 

 aspect. It is a cancer, so virulent, so fetid, and so deeply rooted 

 withal, that neither Doctor Whig nor Doctor Tory, nor even the 

 scientific hand of Mr Surgeon Radical, can give any permanent 

 relief to the suffering patient. Alas, poor Britannia ! it grieves my 

 heart to see so fine a personage reduced to such a state. Thank 

 Heaven ! we Catholics have had no hand in thy misfortunes. They 

 have come from another quarter, where thy real enemies have had 

 all their own way, and have played the game so sadly to thy cost. 



" Here I terminate these Memoirs ; and I put away the pen, not 

 to be used again, except in self-defence. Thus a musician of old 

 (tired, no doubt, with scraping) hung his fiddle on the wall, and 



said,^ 



* Barbiton hie paries habebit.' 



" WALTON HALL, December 30,- 1837." 



Here ends the first instalment of Waterton's Autobiography, 

 published twelve years after his return from his last expedition to 

 the forests. He has thus summed up the events of this time : 



